Baby beautiful

202 BABY BEAUTIFUL. Judith H. La~glois and Rita J. Casey The purpose of this project was to investigate the influence of infant attractiveness on maternal expectations, attitudes, and behavior. One hundredfifty-two families were recruited immediately after the birth of their first baby, and were followed longitudinally for nine months. The families were lower income, from a tri-ethnic population, and all infants were full-term and healthy at birth. Multiple assessments of infants were taken during their hospital stay and again at three, six, and nine months. Photographs of each baby were taken and evaluated for attractiveness at each measurement session. Mothers and infants were observed at each time point interacting in two contexts--playing and feeding. Mothers also answered questionnaires concerning their perceptions of their infants behavior and~haracteristics, and their attitudes toward caregiv~ng and the parental role. .J . . ! Maternal behavlor observed durlng thelr newborn s feeding was factor analyzed. Three factors emerged, reflecting the organization of maternal behavior. These factors were respectively labelled caregiving, interest in others, and affectionate behavior. To assess the relationship between these factors and infant attractiveness, correlations were computed between attractiveness ratings and the factor scores. A significant negative correlation was obtained between infant attractiveness and maternal interest in other people: mothers with less attractive babies paid more attention to people other than the infant than did mothers of attractive babies. The same pattern was obtained for the girls of each of the ethnic groups, and for Caucasian boys. The correlations for Black and Mexican-American boys, however, were essentially zero, indicating interesting ethnicity x sex interactions in the relationship between maternal behavior and infant attractiveness.